For her three Toreadors had gone to death
Or victory, the prize to be a kiss--
One kiss from those red lips of sweetest breath--
A longed-for touch of bliss!

The features of the Spanish girl's portrait have served so often as
those of the courtesan in so many self-styled _poems_, that it would
be tiresome to quote here the hundred lines of description. To judge
of the lengths to which audacity had carried Dinah, it will be enough
to give the conclusion. According to Madame de la Baudraye's ardent
pen, Paquita was so entirely created for love that she can hardly have
met with a knight worthy of her; for

. . . . In her passionate fire
Every man would have swooned from the heat,
When she at love's feast, in her fervid desire,
As yet had but taken her seat.

"And yet she could quit the joys of Seville, its woods and fields of
orange-trees, for a Norman soldier who won her love and carried her
away to his hearth and home. She did not weep for her Andalusia, the
Soldier was her whole joy. . . . But the day came when he was
compelled to start for Russia in the footsteps of the great Emperor."

Nothing could be more dainty than the description of the parting
between the Spanish girl and the Normandy Captain of Artillery, who,
in the delirium of passion expressed with feeling worthy of Byron,
exacted from Paquita a vow of absolute fidelity, in the Cathedral at
Rouen in front of the alter of the Blessed Virgin, who